September 2026

Drew Broussard, The House Upon the Mountain

[The following Tale was discovered among the papers of the late B—— W———, a man well-known to those interested in the history of the Hudson Valley and particularly the Catskill Mountains. He was part of a group that has come to be known as the Brothers Verhaal, chief among whom was the great Diedrich Knickerbocker, known best from that august group for his recitation of the tales of Rip Van Winkle, Ichabod Crane, and others.

While doing research at the Allantide Public Library earlier this year for a long-gestating and long-in-the-coming novel, I was granted access to the papers of Mr. W———. I did not think that there would be anything new forthcoming: those papers have been turned over many times by researchers more formidable than I. Besides, it is not a time for new legends, as this young century continues its screaming and bloody birth. We could all use fewer stories, perhaps, seeing as they’ve become so violently weaponized in the pursuit of martial prowess across Europe. But I digress.

It was towards the end of a long day of dusty research and barely any progress on my novel, which concerns a group of fishermen plying the Hudson in the waning days of the Revolutionary War, when I noticed a loose flap on the inside cover of one of Mr. W———’s journals. After vainly searching for the librarian, I borrowed a letter opener from the circulation desk and gently prised the flap loose. It had been re-glued in some haste, perhaps explaining why no one had noticed it previously.

From the lining of that journal tumbled forth a collection of crumbling pages in W———’s own hand. I have taken care to reproduce his language here exactly as I found it, save a few minor emendations to modernize his spelling and grammar. I make no claim to the veracity of the tale, which is outlandish even by the standards of the Brothers Verhaal. One could also say that it is not to my taste, but I suppose history will determine its value long after both our names have been forgotten.                       

— M. Nolan-Spencer, Esq.]

In my younger days, I traveled across much of this new nation in pursuit of stories. I was not alone in believing that a people required not only shared language and ideals but a shared custom, a mutual foundation of story and philosophy. Could it not be said that Rome’s might owed as much to the collective understanding that Jupiter and Neptune guided the storms and seas in their favor as it did to any amount of martial prowess or economic skill?

The country had already plucked up formative tales from the war, whether Paul Revere’s midnight ride or the dastardly betrayal of Benedict Arnold, but it was (and I daresay still is) my belief that stories of war would serve poor soil for nurturing growth. What’s more, I saw with surprising clarity—I know not from whence it came, only that it sat strongly in my breast from the earliest—that a wealth of stories and myths had already knit this country together, before it even was a country. Indeed, many of the stories widely spread in this now-well-established new century are version of tales that I—and my compatriots had first from the mouths of tavern-keepers and charwives, from fishermen and their children, even from the once-savage people who inhabited this land before our arrival.

I was very happy with my contributions to the burgeoning canon of what we can now call American Stories and have, by and large, moved on from that work. As this country grows ever larger, I leave the pursuit of new stories to younger men. But there is one story that I did not share in those early days that, as my own light grows dim, I find myself compelled to finally put to paper.

You may believe that my doing so is simply crass opportunism, and I cannot say that the burgeoning trend of tales that treat with strange apparitions, unsettling visitations, uncanny experiences has made it easier for me to imagine my own tale being told. The more ill-tempered among my audience may even go so far as to suggest that I’ve invented it now, in the hopes of snatching one final moment of fame or glory before my candle is snuffed altogether.

I offer a simpler explanation, which is that my presence in the tale has never sat well with me. I, and my colleagues in those heady early days, believed that we were best suited to share the tales that others told because we were good at erasing ourselves. Certainly, we functioned as editors and compilers at times and it cannot be argued that we are truly invisible in the telling of these tales—but it was not for us to be active participants. I confess that even now, at the twilight of my life, I am uneasy with the idea of being a protagonist.

Besides, the story lacks a tidy resolution and there is little redemptive or improving about it. Perhaps that is down to it not being a tale like the others but rather a true account. It becomes a tale only in the telling and, even then, only if its audience is inclined to receive it with that kindness.

Well—I am resolved to tell it, at least this once. Nearly two pages now gone. Enough preamble: let us begin.

It was sometime in the early autumn of 1791 that I found myself journeying north from New York City along the Hudson River towards the Kaatskill Mountains. My colleague, Diedrich Knickerbocker, had written extensively of the majesty of those surroundings and his tales were already the envy of many in our cohort.

I had been in the city for a few weeks, having spent the best part of that summer in Virginia chasing stories of the ill-fated colony at Roanoke. I had taken some rooms on the Bowery and was beginning to settle in for a break from my travels, examining the changes that the former capital had undergone in the year or so since the seat of government had moved south to Philadelphia, with the intention of meeting up with Diedrich and several more of our small brotherhood on the equinox as had become a loose tradition.

But Diedrich failed us at the equinox without explanation. A letter arrived at my lodging the next morning, addressed not to our collective but to me directly, exhorting me to travel north with all haste. It was dated some six days prior, meaning that Diedrich had known he would not make his appointment. It would take me another four, possibly five, days to make it to the town he suggested for our rendezvous, a small hamlet at the foot of the Kaatskills called Allantide.

I left with as much speed as I could muster, all the while familiarizing myself with the stories that our brotherhood had collected from the area: I read of the ghostly Hessian horseman who terrorized the small town of Sleepy Hollow and the legends around Dutch Man’s Creek closer to my destination, as well as tales of the Imps of Donderberg and the hidden gold of Captain Kidd. The stories from this stretch of New York State had a distinctly different timbre to those I had been collecting farther to the south, more seasonally rooted to my mind and darker too. Where were the stories of good fairies, summer bounties, and the like? I know that my work in Virginia had been extensively examining one of our young nation’s great formative tragedies, but were there not stories of light and hope and curiosity to be found as well? For my own part, there certainly had been—but it concerned me that the work Knickerbocker had been collecting was if not malevolent then foreboding at best.

But, I had to admit to myself as we crossed the majestic Hudson near the town of Rhinecliff, could that not simply be my concern at my friend’s unexpected absence? Could evil and darkness really thrive so much as all that in a stretch of country so breathtaking, so clearly graced by God Himself?

We put in near the town of Kingston, which had been badly burned by the British during the war but had, by this time, begun to regrow as a hearty tree might following a lightning strike. I had arrived quite late in the day and took a room at the house of one Abraham Louw, who was known to the brotherhood for his tales and his fine coffee.

It was there that my tale begins in earnest, I suppose. As I dined that night with several of Louw’s other guests, I was introduced to a man called Jacob Van Benschoten, who I learned had been a literal trailblazer in his efforts to map and settle the lands immediately at the foot of the Kaatskills. He was a garrulous man, quick with a laugh, and it seemed that he knew most everyone and most everyone knew him. I asked, after a while, if he’d met my comrade over the course of his travels.

A pall fell over his ruddy face. “Oh yes, I have met Knickerbocker,” he replied in his thick Dutch-accented English. “The verhaal man.”

I asked after that word, as this was long before our brotherhood was given the name it would come to be known by. He told me that it was the Dutch word for story, and I asked if he knew any stories of his own.

The glint off the fire caught his eye and for a moment the entire room stilled, as though we were the only two men present where there had just been easily two dozen patrons. “I do, but I am reluctant to tell you. I have already told your friend and now…”

“And now?” I asked. Had something indeed befallen my comrade? It was not unheard of—our work, as simple and good-hearted as it was, trafficked in that most dangerous of currency after all, and while (as I have said) my belief is that shared stories and narratives are necessary to bring a country or a people or even a region together, I do as well understand the ways in which stories can also be used to ostracize and separate. The ways that some stories are, to some, worth taking to the grave or defending with similar intensity.

“And now, he has been gone for a fortnight, and I fear he has befallen some mischief.” Van Benschoten went on: “I told him of an impossible structure, a massive building near the top of Overlook Mountain, the nearest of these grand peaks. Impossible, I say, because it is not always there. I myself have seen a glimpse of it, although I’ve never been able to approach—the mountain is a treacherous climb under the best of weathers, home as it is to poisonous snakes and bears and the like.”

I produced the letter from Knickerbocker. “And this town, Allantide?”

“A small village, about a day’s journey inland. Near enough to the foot of the mountain in question, heading into the greater range. It would have been a likely enough place for your friend to begin his trek.”

Van Benschoten was soon interrupted from our conversation, whisked away to some other brighter business. I finished my drink and took to my room. My dreams that night went unremembered, but I awoke with a sense of unease leadening my limbs.

It was short work to hire a horse and set off on what Van Benschoten had called the ‘Onteora Trail’ to the west, winding towards the true foot of the mountains. The glories of the prior days were gone: it was a thoroughly gloomy march, gray and cool and drizzling. I began to understand, I thought, the circumstances that could lead a people to populate their legendaria with such melancholic and eerie tales.

But it was an uneventful journey and I arrived in Allantide before the sun had set. My thoughts on that fine village have been well-recorded elsewhere and I shan’t bother with them now, save to say that the first glimpse of the steeple of the modest church brought me as much joy on that first visit as any sight in Christendom could. Though the day remained miserly, a brightness did fall over my heart as the kind townsfolk waved at me, directing me to the small local inn.

There, I learned that the town was largely familiar with Knickerbocker as well. They explained that he had, indeed, been there just a few days prior—a better sign, to be sure, than Van Benschoten’s fearful fortnight—but had returned to the mountain since. I was surprised to learn that he had come in the hopes of my having already arrived, but that he felt he could not wait longer and would return again in some two days’ time.

So it was that I took up a brief respite in town, despite my lingering fears that something ill had befallen my friend. Again, you are no doubt familiar with some of the tales that I scribed during that time, of the standing stones and the black apples, the arrival of the wandering bookseller who had stayed to open their small library and had been an associate of the then-recently-deceased Benjamin Franklin. It was a not-altogether unhappy time and to my earlier points regarding the melancholic nature of the tales of that region, I was somewhat rebutted. Indeed, in all my travels, I’ve rarely heard of such unabashed hope and joy as that of the town’s ‘first bake’ ritual in the new year.

The day of Knickerbocker’s proposed return came and went. The following day dawned bright, if cold. Although the townsfolk I’d come to already befriend cautioned me against too hasty a nervous response to his absence, it was clear to me that they were unnerved as well. All had acknowledged, openly, the dangers of these woods and the mountains—and so it was that they understood when I suggested I would ride off in search of my friend.

To this day, I do not know why I had not broached with the fine citizens of Allantide the stories of the mysterious manse upon the hill. I know that I thought about it, that even as I was hopping into the back of a wagon that would take me to an easy spot to begin my climb, I was aware that should say something. But somefit of pique held my tongue. What’s more, no one in the town thought it pertinent to say anything to me, either.

The hike, if it could be called that, was grueling. Within moments, and despite the chill in the air, my shirt was soaked through. I had been advised to move as directly upward as possible, although it would have been less immediately taxing to cut a switchback path along the steep incline. It was, the townsfolk had explained, the time of year when the bears prepared for their long winters’ slumber—and the snakes had not yet bedded down for the season either. The more I stayed on the cleared path, the better off I would be.

I knew that I was likely to spend at least one night up the mountain if not more, so I was admittedly laden with a few days’ worth of supplies as well as a bedroll and some cover. Thought I contemplated shucking it off several times, I never let my exhaustion get the better of me, and eventually I made it to something of the summit.

It was hard to tell, both because night was quickly falling—the year had slipped, without my leave, into October—and because the mountains seemed to undulate from this vantage point. Was I at the top of this peak, or was this a smaller step towards the grander peak beyond? The philosophical musings of what made a mountain kept me some cold company that evening as I lit a small fire and supped on the meager but filling provisions I’d brought with me.

For those unfamiliar with sleeping in the open, let me briefly digress to say that it is not the bright moon or the chill breeze that will disrupt your sleep: rather, it is the almost constant sound of the natural world. Even in the darkest hours of the night, the world is vibrantly alive all around one, and it is (I believe) a skill to be able to sleep through the night and find rest while also not sleeping so heavily that one might succumb to any of the myriad dangers that can befall such a man.

So it was that, sometime in the small hours, I was awoken by the sounds of footfalls. I am not and have never claimed to be much of a naturalist, but I could in those days distinguish readily the sound of a human step from the general step of a wild animal. Thinking I had perhaps drawn my erstwhile companion to my camp, I sat up and softly called Diedrich’s name into the night.

The footfalls ceased, but there was no reply.

Wondering if it had been nothing but a dream, perhaps a spot of mustard working its way through digestion, I laid back down but found that my ears would not unprick.

Shortly, I heard not footfalls but the particular sound of flint striking followed not long after by the catch of flame. I sat up once more and looked carefully around the wood. Some distance away, perhaps a few hundred yards, I could see the glimmer of what must have been a campfire.

Certain that it was Knickerbocker, I cautiously rose and gathered up my things. The worst scenario, I thought, would be that it was not Knickerbocker but some other traveler and I could bed down at his fire instead.

With careful steps and a raised hand against errant branches, I made my way towards the fire. Behind it seemed to be a black void, so deep was the night and so violent was the fire’s light to my vision.

I was a mere dozen paces from the fire when a man’s voice called out to me, by name. Not Knickerbocker’s, though: a deeper voice, rugged and hearty where Knickerbocker’s was smoother and more refined by his time at college in New Haven. I called back, asking who it was that addressed me by name.

When I stepped into the circle of firelight, I saw the man standing there, his face obscured by the shimmering darkness. He was fitted in clothes that were easily a hundred years out of fashion, and I thought immediately of Knickerbocker’s tale, only recently reported, about the mysterious and ghostly Dutchmen who had lured that poor village fool into a multi-decade slumber.

“Come sit,” the man offered and I noticed that he had a spitted rabbit roasting on the fire. “Share a meal and a palaver with me, that I might join your cadre of stories.”

“How is it,” I asked again, “that you know my name and my business, friend? Are you acquainted with my colleague, Diedrich Knickerbocker?”

The man’s face remained stubbornly enshrouded. “I have had the pleasure of meeting your friend Knickerbocker—he has been my guest twice-over, now.”

At the word ‘guest,’ a strange waver—I can think of no better way to explain it—shot through the air, as though reality was naught but a pool of water and his word a stone cast into its midst. This uncanny ripple caught my full attention and I followed its movement, if that is indeed what it could be called, towards the black expanse behind the fire only to see, to my great surprise, a massive stone building stretching several storeys tall and almost farther than I could see in either direction side-to-side.

Lights burned in many of the windows and I could see movement within. Most unsettling, however, was the sound: where, merely a breath earlier, there had only been the unsilence of the unsleeping forest, now the night was lively with human—or so I still assumed—merriment.

Was this, then, the mysterious house upon the hill? Had it been here all along, and so close to where I had bedded down for the night? I could not believe that I had missed it, that I had been so unobservant even in the gloaming evening, but what other explanation could have served?

“I can see,” said my host with undisguised laughter in his tone, “that you are the sort of man who needs not only to see but to touch in order to believe. Would you like to step inside? I can offer you a drink, or a more robust repast than my meager evening’s offering here.”

“Your offer is a generous one,” I replied after a moment’s thought, “but I make a habit of only accepting invitations from those to whom I have been properly introduced.” I did not add that seeing my host’s face was also a prerequisite, as I had theretofore taken that fact as a given.

“You really don’t know who I am, storyteller? I confess, that wounds me.” The man waved, as though batting away a fly. “Although it is not your fault: you have only collected the stories you’ve been told, which is not the same as opting to believe them.”

It would have been a performance surpassing reason, but the man’s remarks prompted me to wonder once again if he might be my comrade in disguise, playing a prank or testing some new act on my unwitting self. Knickerbocker and several of our fellow storymen were of a mind that the stories we collected were not merely rooted in a kernel of truth but often accurate depictions of a reality that modernity was straining to leave behind. I could not disagree that many of the stories I had heard, the hopeful and the fearful alike, were founded in some practical event that some individual had experienced—but I believed that those practical events were often more rational and, in truth, less interesting than their resultant stories. Were we entertainers, or historians? Did we have an obligation to veracity, and if so, veracity to what or to whom? To the original event, to the storyteller we heard it from, or to a future audience who might encounter the story in years or even decades or centuries to come?

It had been the cause of several significant arguments between our band in its early days, and I suppose we should account ourselves lucky that no fiery schism arose then to wipe out the nascent fellowship.

And though I would never offer it to our collective, the night in question swayed my understanding on the issue and moved me to depths of belief I’d not thought possible in this enlightened era.

I asked again after the man’s name and he finally stepped forward in such a way that his face could be seen in the fire’s glow. He was older than I had initially believed, with the build of a man whose larder had never known lack. He had the most dazzling eyes I had ever seen, a swirling green-gold like the summer’s last sunset over a grassy field.

Those eyes were all the more notable for their frame: the man wore a mask that covered the top half of his face, shaped like the end of an oak leaf. I could not see how it was attached to his head, as there were no obvious laces or ties keeping it from falling. Above the mask, I could see a woven diadem of branches that might have put a more penitent man than I in the mind of his Savior’s crown of thorns.

“I am the Autumn Triumphant, the Harvest’s End, the center of my triumvirate, Lord and King of the Autumn Court.” His proclamation of royalty did little to assuage my growing belief that I had met a madman but he extended his hand, clasping mine and shaking it with a warmth that reminded me of the greetings I had found among the Quakers of Pennsylvania. I could feel the creak of his leather glove as his palm met mine and it was the contact that dispelled any possibility that I was dreaming or that this was some strange phantasmal hallucination prompted by some malevolent miasma bubbling up from the earth.

“Hail and well met,” I managed, the phrase springing from my mouth like an old actor remembering the Shakespeare of his youth, happy it hadn’t been forgotten after all. But had I ever known such a phrase? And what did I know of royalty, born as I was to Delaware shores not a decade before the colonial yoke was severed?

“Good enough,” the Autumn King said, and he placed a hand on my back, guiding me towards the sprawling estate before me. He brought me to the massive front door, a knocker in the shape of a smiling ghoul leering out at me. “So then, would you like to step inside?” I nodded, unthinking, and he welcomed me to—but when he named the place, I heard a horrible buzzing as though I was imminently to be swarmed by bees.

As soon as it came over me, the sound was gone again. My face, however, must have betrayed my confusion as my companion reached again to steady me. I flinched away from him, taking a few stuttering steps to the side. The King looked wary, asking after my health, but his voice was no longer the cheery boom of before. It had grown sinister, and I had the intense realization that if I were to go with him through those doors, I would never be heard from again.

I must confess, reader, should there ever be a reader, that a part of me did consider it all the same. Imagine, the expanse of possibility that could come from walking into a gathering with, if he spoke true, the King of the very season! Might there not be other seasons with such royalty as well? Could I walk among them and record their stories, trace their lineage among the bastardized tales told by modern men?

And it was not to say that I would die—I knew then, with the bravado of youth, that death’s scythe would not swing for me for many years. How I long for such reassurance and poise now!

But I did not go with the King through those doors. Instead, I turned back, walking with purpose into the woods. I did not say a word to the King, nor did I look over my shoulder even once. And he did not call out to me, or send pursuers, although I could hear the enticing sounds of the party on the wind for some time.

I walked until the sun came up and I found myself on the main street of Allantide, visibly the worse for wear. Perhaps the townsfolk who spied me thought I was just a drunk, stumbling home after a long night. I remember accosting a man on the street and asking him the date—I feared, I believe, that I had been transported across the years like Diedrich’s Mr. Van Winkle, but it was only the day after my arrival.

I ventured to ask after the strange mansion on the hill, the Triumphant Autumn, this Court that seemed to drift in and out of our very reality—but no one had corroborating stories, or at least none that they were willing to share.

I received word that afternoon that Diedrich was in Kingston, sorry to have failed two of our appointed meetings and bereft that he would be sailing off to the north before he could see me or even receive a response, that he had boarded a boat and was setting off that very day. I did not dally in Allantide, although I did spend a rather uncomfortable and wary final night at the foot of those Kaatskill peaks. The next day, I rode for Kingston and paid heavily to procure a space on the night-mail coach for points south.

It was not long after that, mere months as I recall, that schismatic politics did irrevocably fracture our brotherhood, so firmly that no amount of story could repair the damage. I saw Diedrich briefly at that explosive final meeting, but had no opportunity to speak with him about his own encounter with the Lord and King of the Autumn Court—for though I pushed the story away for these many years, the particulars remained vivid as the day they occurred, and I knew that the King had spoken of Diedrich. But Diedrich, to my knowledge, never wrote about the house upon the mountain or anything else relating to the town of Allantide. He died before we could repair our friendship, which pains me to this day.

So perhaps it is in his honor, then, that I complete this last tale. If it is to be the last, that is—for I plan to make for Allantide on the morrow. And though my bones ache and my body is already sore at the prospect of a march up that hill, I hear that there is a lodge newly opened on Overlook Mountain. I know not whether to hope for it, but I confess to curiosity once again, even after all these years. Perhaps the old offer might even still stand.

Author biography:
Drew Broussard is a writer, bookseller, and producer. His Brave New Weird-shortlisted fiction has appeared in Macabre Magazine, 13tracks, the voidspace, Club Chicxulub, Strip Mall Magazine, ritual dagger zine, and elsewhere. He is a contributing editor at Literary Hub and the bookshop manager of Rough Draft Bar & Books in Kingston, NY. He does other things as well, from time to time.